Protectors of the Endless Video Preview and News Round Up

There's been a lot of Mists of Pandaria raid testing lately and today we have two more previews for you: a video by Lore of Protectors of the Endless and screenshots of Elegon, a celestial dragon reminiscent of Algalon.

In today's news round up, there are even more Ghostcrawler posts on class balance that we've organized by class after the cut, clarifications on challenge mode gear scaling, and a large debate on the quality, difficulty, and quantity of available 4.3 content.

Video Preview: Protectors of the Endless

Learn all about the Protectors of the Endless with Lore's video taken from beta testing yesterday! This encounter requires players to kill three corrupted Jinyu bosses with different sets of abilities. We have the full Encounter Journal toggled below the video.

Encounter Journal

Protectors of the Endless

When the Sha of Fear invaded the Terrace of Endless Spring, three venerated jinyu protectors were corrupted, and they betrayed the other mortal sentinels, slaying them all. The twisted guardians have now turned their attention to any intruders who might interrupt the sha's attack on the area's last defenses.

Sha Corruption: Killing a member of the Protectors causes Sha Corruption to explode from their bodies and possess the remaining Protectors. Sha Corruption heals each Protector to their maximum health, increases their damage done by 25%, and grants them additional abilities.

Defiled Ground: Protector Kaolan uses this ability after gaining a single dose of Sha Corruption.Protector Kaolan desecrates the land beneath a player's location for the remainder of the fight, inflicting 100000 Shadow damage every second and increasing damage taken from Defiled Ground by 10% for 45 sec. This effect stacks.

Expel Corruption: Protector Kaolan uses this ability after gaining two doses of Sha Corruption.Protector Kaolan expels a mass of corruption at his location for the remainder of the fight, inflicting 100000 Shadow damage to all players within 30 yards every 3 seconds. The damage of Expelled Corruption decreases as a player stands farther away from the source of corruption.

Elder Regail:

Lightning Bolt: Elder Regail hurls a bolt of lightning at his current target, inflicting 92500 to 107500 Nature damage.

Lightning Prison: Elder Regail imprisons 2 players in a field of lightning and stuns them. The Lightning Prison causes each player to inflict 75000 Nature damage every second to all players within 7 yards.

In 25 player Difficulty, Elder Regail imprisons 5 players.

Lightning Storm: Elder Regail uses this ability after gaining a single dose of Sha Corruption.Elder Regail summons a Lightning Storm, creating several waves of lightning strikes. The first wave strikes at Elder Regail's location and then successive waves strike in a ring around him at 20, 40, 60 and 80 yards. Each strike inflicts 370000 to 430000 Nature damage to all players within 10 yards of Lightning Storm's impact.

Overwhelming Corruption: Elder Regail uses this ability after gaining two doses of Sha Corruption.Corruption overwhelms Elder Regail, inflicting 30000 Shadow damage to all players every 3 seconds and increases their damage taken from Overwhelming Corruption by 5%. This effect stacks.

Elder Asani:

Water Bolt: Elder Asani hurls a bolt of water at a random player's location, inflicting 87875 to 102125 Nature damage to all players within 3 yards of the targeted location.

Cleansing Waters: Elder Asani summons a globe of Cleansing Waters at a Protector's location. When the globe reaches the ground, it heals all targets within 3.5 yards for 5% of their total health every second. Targets also receive 50% additional healing from all sources for 30 sec.

Corrupted Waters: Elder Asanil uses this ability after gaining a single dose of Sha Corruption.Elder Asani summons a globe of Corrupted Water that empowers all Protectors, granting them 100% melee and casting speed until destroyed.

Overwhelming Corruption: Elder Asani uses this ability after gaining two doses of Sha Corruption.Corruption overwhelms Elder Asani, inflicting 30000 Shadow damage to all players every 3 seconds and increases their damage taken from Overwhelming Corruption by 5%. This effect stacks.

Minion of Fear:Minions of Fear pour from the Terrace of Endless Spring, pursuing the Protector with the lowest remaining health.

Corrupted Essence: When a Minion of Fear dies, it infects the 2 closest players with Corrupted Essence, increasing their damage done by 10% for 2 min. This effect stacks up to $118191U times.If Corrupted Essence ever reaches $118191U stacks, the player replaces the Corrupted Essence effect with the Essence of Fear.

Essence of Fear: The Essence of Fear inflicts 250000 Shadow damage to all players within 30 yards.

Greater Corrupted Essence: When a Minion of Fear reaches a Protector, it fills them with Greater Corrupted Essence, increasing their damage done by 10% for 2 min. This effect stacks up to $117905U times.If Greater Corrupted Essence ever reaches $117905U stacks, the Protector replaces the Greater Corrupted Essence effect with the Greater Essence of Fear.

Greater Essence of Fear: The Greater Essence of Fear inflicts 500000 Shadow damage to all players and horrifies them for 3 sec.

Raid Preview: Elegon

We also have pictures from the Elegon encounter, open for testing earlier in the week. This boss has a celestial Titan theme similar to Algalon l'Observateur and looks just as stunning. As an added bonus, players transform into Celestial Form with Toucher des titans!

We datamined the boss and celestial player models a few weeks back--click on the images to view them in our 3D modelviewer!

Encounter Journal

Elegon

Dedicated to the advancement of their empire, the mogu salvaged and repurposed titan technology to generate untold power in the depths of this ancient complex. Why these energies have been focused into the cold will of a celestial dragon is a mystery that lies at the very heart of the vaults.

Energy Vortex:An active Energy Vortex transforms any player or creature who stands in it, granting a small taste of the Titan's true power.

In Heroic Difficulty, the Energy Vortex prevents targeting into or out of the Energy Vortex.

Touch of the Titans: Contact with the Energy Vortex transforms the target into celestial form, increasing all damage done by 50% and healing done by 50%.

Overcharged: The Energy Vortex periodically inflicts players with Overcharge, causing them to take 5% additional damage. This effect stacks.

Stage One: Entering Defensive Mode:Elegon activates the Energy Vortex, attacking with Celestial Breath and calling for Celestial Protectors to help defend the Engine of Nalak'sha.Stage One ends at 90% and 50% remaining health.

Materialize Protector: When Elegon has more than 50% remaining health, he summons a Celestial Protector to attack the players.

Celestial Protector: A construct of pure energy, the Celestial Protector serves as primary defense for the Engine of Nalak'sha.

Phasing: The Celestial Protector exists in a state of flux, held together by the immense power of the Energy Vortex. When the Protector has over 25% remaining health and exists outside the bounds of the Energy Vortex, players inflict 90% less damage to it.

Arcing Energy: The Celestial Protector inflicts 76000 to 84000 Arcane damage to two random players and applies Closed Circuit to each target.

Closed Circuit: After being hit by the Arcing Energy, the Closed Circuit reduces the healing received by the target by 50% for 20 sec.

Stage Two: Primary Power Offline:Elegon attempts to reactivate the Engine of Nalak'sha by creating Energy Charges to energize the Empyreal Focuses. If players destroy all Energy Charges in a wave, Elegon will continue to create more Energy Charges. The creation process permanently weakens his physical form.Stage Two ends once an Energy Charge leaves the Energy Vortex.

Draw Power: Elegon attempts to restart the Engine of Nalak'sha by constructing six Energy Charges from his own body, permanently increasing all damage taken by 10%. This effect stacks.

Energy Charge: A small part of Elegon himself, the Energy Charge contains enough Arcane energy to restart The Engine of Nalak'sha.

High Energy: With each successive cast of Draw Power, the created Energy Charge gains an additional 20% movement speed. This effect stacks.

Discharge: Upon reaching zero health, the Energy Charge explodes and inflicts 585000 to 615000 Arcane damage to all players.

Stage Three: Power Draw Stable:Elegon has reactivated The Engine of Nalak'sha, disabling the Energy Vortex and activating all Empyreal Focuses. Elegon shields himself from all damage.Stage Three ends once players destroy all the Empyreal Focuses.

Empyreal Focus: The Focuses activate whenever the Engine of Nalak'sha begins operation, venting energy into the surrounding platform. Damaging all six Empyreal Focuses temporarily disables the Engine of Nalak'sha.

As always, this testing schedule is very fluid and subject to the realities of a beta environment. We might have to change the time of a testing session or cancel it entirely, due to bugs, builds, server hardware issues, etc. Keep an eye on this forum for the latest information, and thank you in advance for testing and providing feedback.

New Scenarios Available

Taepsilum

The following scenarios are available for testing:

A Brewing Storm

Brewmoon Festival

Crypt of Forgotten Kings

Unga Ingoo

We’d love to hear any feedback you may have on any of these. Please provide the name of the scenario at the top of your feedback post.

Challenge Mode Gear Scaling

Watcher

The upward scaling is a convenience measure solely enabled during beta testing, so that all interested players with level 90 beta characters can participate.

In the live game, any items that are over item level 463 will be scaled down to 463. Items that are lower than item level 463 will be unchanged.The system that will be used for challenge modes upon release actually preserves your hit and expertise bonuses, compensating by deducting extra rating from your other secondary stats (crit, haste, mastery, Spirit) in proportion to how much of each you had to begin with.

This sounds complicated, but it should be relatively seamless and handled behind the scenes, with the intent being to minimize the need to reforge/regem for challenge modes.

To use some decidedly fake numbers, let's say I have an average ilvl of 500 and I have the following stats:

When I enter a challenge dungeon, my ilvl scales down to 463, reducing my stats by roughly 30% (rounding for the sake of simplicity). However, the system keeps my Hit and Expertise values unchanged, overcompensating by reducing the other ratings more heavily.

(Now yes, if your normal gearset is designed to hit-cap you against raid bosses, you'll effectively be slightly over the hit cap against dungeon targets, so people looking to min/max completely may still have some tinkering to do, but unless you're aiming to beat the realm-best time, the cost of being a couple percent over the hit cap is going to pale in comparison to the benefit of precise and coordinated play.)

Tl;dr version: If you are hit-capped before you enter a challenge mode, you'll still be hit-capped inside. It's magic.

Beta Class Balance Analysis

Ghostcrawler

We're not even convinced it's an increase.

We don't like to get into the habit of sharing our numbers directly, because among other things, I have found it usually doesn't resolve anything. Instead it just leads to additional questions as players want to delve into rotation details or challenge our assumptions or otherwise grow the discussion broader, and often broader than our typical capacity in which to participate. For that reasons, and a few others, things usually work better if you share your numbers, we compare them to ours, and we decide what to do about any differences.

However, we will make an exception this time about .

I think I originally threw out numbers like doing 7% of Unholy's damage. Now that the stats on gear have solidified and we have fixed various bugs and so on, we do get higher numbers (see below), but never as high as the 20%+ numbers that sometimes appear on the forums. We do assume pooling a Death Rune for to generate these numbers.

-- Using ilevel 463 gear, with no talents: 76.5% of maximum theoretical uses per second in execute range. 11.02% of total damage.-- Using ilevel 463 gear with : 99.75% of maximum theoretical uses per second in execute range. 12.88% of total damage.-- Using ilevel 463 gear with Renforcement runique: 95.54% of maximum theoretical uses per second in execute range. 11.96% of total damage.-- Using ilevel 463 gear with Corruption runique: 87.08% of maximum theoretical uses per second in execute range. 11.09% of total damage.

So as many people claim, is optimal for maximizing . But how does that play out in terms of total DPS over the course of a fight?

Unless you are on a fight with a very prolonged execute phase or one in which the execute phase is what matters most, we don't see as mandatory in terms of DPS. (We're also okay with situationally one talent being "the best" so long as it isn't the best on most fights. After all, an AE talent is useless on a one boss fight.)

Now, I realize some of you are arguing that is not a DPS increase, but that the rotation is so much simpler with that it still feels mandatory. That is sort of outside of the scope of this, a numbers thread, but we will consider the feedback.Don't get me wrong, I see the DK issue and agree with it, but there's always going to be a theoretical gain of a few percent somewhere on something.We can get pretty close in most situations. The examples I was talking about were a Vael-style boss who is in execute range the entire time, or the fact that a talent that improves your AE ability isn't as useful on a Patchwerk fight. If we made some kind of crazy fight where DPS specs had to heal for a short period of time, then they might really want healing talents. But those tend to be exceptions. There will be plenty of fights where a talent choice will be ambiguous or different talents will work better for different players.Why isnt Corruption runique becoming baseline for Death Knights like it was intended to become during the Wrath Beta?Why do we have a talent tier with three talents that do numerically the same thing?Your post proved there is no difference what-so-ever between the three and having played with all three on the beta myself I have no change in playstyle.

We added Renforcement runique in Cataclysm to prevent the DK rotation from becoming too predictable and cyclical. However, it was a controversial change and there were DKs that didn't like it. (In general with an audience of WoW's size, you can find someone that loves or hates any feature, so part of our job is trying to determine when that love or hate crosses some kind of threshold). With the new talent model, we thought it would be a good opportunity to give DKs a choice about what resource model they wanted. If they didn't want a passive but potentially random rotation, they could opt into .

Ghostcrawler

Does your data support the conclusion that Ferveur is significantly better than , or is my experiment flawed? An indication of which statement is correct is sufficient for my purposes. I am willing to return to the drawing board and test these talents again.

is weak. We are considering moving Bête féroce up to the "focus tier" and redesigning a bit.

Ghostcrawler

Glyphe carbonisé may be a bit problematic for a minor glyph. Problem is that if the Mage is Arcane, the Mirror Images benefit from the Arcane Blast debuff; this results in nearly a 40% increase to their damage, which is a pretty hefty improvement. Fire and Frost both seem to get (in 463 blues plus crafted epics) about 200,000 damage out of a Image miroir cast, while Arcane gets about 280,000 damage.

We’ll take a look at this. We want it to contribute the same damage, but in a different way. Them benefitting from the Déflagration des Arcanes debuff is intended, but need to be tuned with that in mind.

Ghostcrawler

Was the 12% haste Holy pallies lost via removing Judgements of the Pure (9%) and Speed of Light (3%) intended or was it something you guys didn't notice? Also, are Holy Pallies supposed to have 2.4s cast times on HL/DL?

Intended. We tried to get rid of all of the passive talents and glyphs that just added haste and crit for the purpose of feeling like an attractive talent or glyph. We can add those stats back when needed, but we have been trying to avoid every spec having an arbitrary amount of crit, haste and hit, because it's confusing and complicates stat allocations on gear (a player with tons of crit stops wanting crit on gear). For paladins specifically, we did make Horion sacré crit more often than normal, and we added back Divine Favor recently to get back some "active" haste, and there are still some mechanics like Imprégnation de lumière. If those aren't sufficient (in our minds), we can add more haste.

Do note however that if you are comparing a L’Âme des dragons-geared class to one in Mists quest greens, your ratings are going to take a hit. You'll get back up to epic-levels of combat ratings when you are epically geared once again. I have opined recently about the necessary evil of nerfing stat ratings every expansion and how we'd like to find an alternative that is more palatable, but it's a non-trivial problem. (We can't for example have characters going from 50% crit in one expansion to 100% crit in the next and 150% crit in the following.)

No, it was more about the number of instant heals paladins already have through Horion sacré and . A common complaint we hear about paladins in PvP is: how do I stop them from healing when so many of their heals aren't subject to interrupts because they are instant?

You guys haven't gotten a build in awhile, but we've made a few changes to make Eternal Glory and more competitive with Soigneur altruiste, and we're also likely to design Glyphe carbonisé. We also reinstated Divine Favor, as I mentioned. (Unrelated to haste, we're also looking at and Lumière de l’aube as well.)

If Holy still feels too slow after those changes, we'll consider other options, but we didn't want to make too many changes at once.

Ghostcrawler

I have a question concerning Hymne divin, why exactly was it removed from all specs except Holy? The holy version was far more powerful at a 3 minute cooldown whereas disc/shadow had it on an 8 minute cooldown.

Shadow doesn't need a potent raid cooldown and Disc has Mot de pouvoir : Barrière. It's also not a written rule that every healer needs a certain allocation of cooldowns. We want the healer specs to feel unique yet relatively desirable.

Ghostcrawler

Currently on the MoP Beta servers (and in fact it seems ever since was implemented for Enhancement), if you can sync your auto attacks to happen at the same time, you are consuming only a single charge of for most of the synced mainhand/offhand swing combos.

Good catch. Fixed for next build, and increased the number of charges to 5 to partially compensate.

Is this very short ICD intended to prevent situations like Normal Cast/Echo Proc/Overload/Overload Echo Proc, or will these continue to occur?

Ghostcrawler

No, you're correct. I completely mangled my description. It's one of those deals that works fairly intuitively when you try it, but it kind of a bear to explain. I changed my original text above. It actually works quite a bit like death knight runes (which can also be confusing, so possibly not the best example).

If you have Doublement and use Charge A, then it comes back in 20 sec. If you use Charge B as soon as you can (which is 1 sec after Charge A), then it comes back in 40 sec. You aren't getting twice as many charges of Charge. You just gain flexibility -- you can borrow a charge from the future.

If that still sounds confusing, then I invite you just to try it. It is much more intuitive in game.

Mea culpa. I try to strive to strike a balance between spending time here but not too much time, because, you know, day job. Sometimes my brain works faster (or slower!) than my fingers. :)

Edit: Double mea culpa on my bad Latin.Charge's Charge A starts recharging when Charge B is discharged, but Charge B doesn't recharge until Charge A's charge has recharged, making it so that after discharging Charge A, Charge's Charge B won't recharge a second charge for 40 seconds.

Im a little confused as to how Bain de sang is supposed to work. The tooltip leads me to think that I pop bloodbath, and 30% of the damage I did at the very beginning of Bain de sang is distributed as a bleed over 6 seconds. After 6 seconds, the next attack triggers another set of bleeds based on 30% of that attack.

Bain de sang is just "your attacks do +30% more damage" in the form of bleeds. It has always seemed a little more confusing than intended though so maybe there is something else going on.

Ghostcrawler

My guess is that it's like that because of how they changed mastery from being x points like in cata for everyone to actually displaying the percent from conversion for each spec.

We tried to simplify the concept of mastery. Before, mastery rating converted to mastery points which converted to an individual number for your spec (such as Deep Healing for Resto shaman). We cut out the middle man and just have mastery rating and your individual mastery now. It is intended to be analogous to crit rating converting directly to crit percent instead of crit rating converting to crit points which then convert to crit percent.

Is it intended that lower levels can now become unhittable through avoidance since the strength to parry conversion change?

No. We'll look into it.

While numbers are part of the argument, they take a big back seat to the fun argument.

Yes, fun is more important than numbers... but not in this thread. :)

Pearl of Pandaria Q&A

Blizzard Entertainment

Get an inside look at the upcoming hardcover comic, Pearl of Pandaria with artwork by Sean Galloway in a new Q&A with New York Times best-selling author, Micky Neilson. Micky takes the time to share some insights on the setting and production of this new story.

Read the Q&A at WoW Insider and get a look at four comic panels . Don’t forget to pre-order your copy today!

Consuming Content Too Fast?

Draztal

You can perceive it as a grind. However, keep in mind that Mists of Pandaria also adds scenarios, pet battles, challenge modes and plenty of daily quests to do at level 90, which will definitely help in providing more content to do. And more importantly, do whatever you want to do.

LFR is not going away, if that's what you're asking for, it's actually useful for players that can't be part of a raiding guild (or don't want, for whatever reason) to experience the content.

And new raid content will be appealing to raiders, surely. Will it be appealing to your friends/guildmates? Well, that's really up to them. There's a number of (personal) factors that no amount of raid content will change.

I'm not taking it as an attack, no worries. I understand you're trying to express yourself. Honestly, I'm unsure what's the message you're trying to give, though. You become bored of the content because it's not hard enough for you? (seeing that you've progressed nicely on Heroic L’Âme des dragons). If that's the case, I can tell you that the devs are hard at work to roll patches faster than we've done in the past.

I also have the feeling (though I'm probably wrong) that some players are underestimating the true value of challenge modes (not necessarily your case). In those modes you're fighting against the clock, so that will always be challenging (you can always try to do it faster).

But the issue is not exactly the lack of content, but the increasingly lower difficulty of it.Ever since WotLK raids get nerfed to the ground so that a very large part of the raiders, skilled or not so, can kill the what should be hardest boss of an expansion. wowprogress.com reports that as of today over 10% of all raid guilds have downed Folie d’Aile de mort : mode héroïque.

I'm pretty sure at least several hardcore guilds kinda agreed that Sinestra was as difficulty as HC Le roi-liche, and Ragnaros was harder, so I wouldn't call that an "increasingly lower difficulty".

So in the end, making the game to easy, will achieve the oposite; less people will see the content, becuase there will simply be less people playing the game.

This is an argument I've seen thrown around plenty of times. Yet, Wrath of the Lich King, which seems to be considered by many hardcore players as the easiest expansion ever, had some of the highest participation rates in dungeons and raids we've ever seen. And, ironically enough, also had some of the hardest encounters to date (I remember the threads and headaches that some hardcore guilds were having at the time with Le roi-liche and Professeur Putricide Heroic, as well as Yogg-Saron +0, Sartharion 3D, just to name a few).

You wouldn't be able to. Even if the content is easy for you at a given point, it was challenging before, and it's just natural that it becomes even easier over time once you've mastered it. But there are players that are still progressing through L’Âme des dragons and, believe it or not, are actually being challenged by the content in its current form.

1. Why are you replacing content instead of adding content?2. Why do you believe 3 difficulties of a same raid (a final one at that!) provide people with ample opportunities? I am a casual 6/8 heroic raider and, sorry, I srsly cba to enter DS again unless someone puts a gun to my head in before: "Go heroic". For those ... oh .. two extra abilities in the same fight? sorry, that's not right.in before: "but, but, but try Spine hc!" sorry, I would be ashamed to have Échine d’Aile de mort : mode héroïque achieve when someone cares to check what date I did it and sees the resounding 25% nerf. I'd rather feel good about 5/8 hc at 0% debuff. and 6/8 hc at 5% debuff.3. Why are you nerfing heroic content thereby stripping it of any and all sense of achievement?4. how do you believe leaving people to dwell on the <epic> final fight with DW's fingernails for entire 6 months is right or even remotely fair?

1. No content is being replaced. Giving players a mean to gear up through alternate means to get up to speed is something we've been doing since the TBC days. If you want to go and finish Firelands, you can go and do it (and completing Gloire à l’écumeur de raids des terres de Feu is no easy task, even if it doesn't require you to kill Heroic Ragnaros).2. You mention you would be "ashamed" if someone sees you killed Échine d’Aile de mort : mode héroïque at the 25% nerf. First, why do you care what some random person on the internet thinks about you? I'd rather put at the front my own enjoyment. And if, for one reason or another, I can't kill Échine d’Aile de mort : mode héroïque before the 25% debuff, well, big deal (as long as I'm having fun).3. I've explained that here.4. Actually, the developers agree that Échine d’Aile de mort : mode héroïque is harder than Folie d’Aile de mort : mode héroïque in most aspects. In theory, the concept of the encounter was great, but in practice it's kind of just a tentacle fight. They're trying to deliver an awesome encounter with the Sha of Fear at the Terrace of Endless Spring.

As for the time itself, it's not different than how long other end-of-expansion bosses have been available for.

As I said before, people stop playing when they can't progress, with the exception of the truly hardcore and dedicated raiders, that will keep pushing until the brick wall has been destroyed. So, the best guilds out there will get first to the end and finish it, but a progressive debuff system also allows everyone a chance at getting through the content at the pace they can (putting a side example, if someone likes football, would that person enjoy it if he were allowed to play only at the same level of performance that Rooney, Ronaldo, Messi, etc do?, probably not, however he'd surely have plenty of fun playing with his local team, or just with his friends, this is kind of the same, not everyone can perform at the absolute maximum level).

Keep in mind that there're plenty of players that love raiding and start on normal hoping to eventually get to Heroic and keep progressing. Since we've already said that these players will stop playing when they get stuck, the developers don't feel it's right to tell them that they should just be happy to have made it that far and stay in the LFR, or normal just because they get to see the content.

We've got from world first guilds that can pull amazing strategies to players that don't have the time for more than LFR with everyone else in between them. That people needs something to keep them willing to progress.

Someone else getting the same piece of gear you have hardly nullifies your work. It really makes as much sense as feeling offended because other players are getting to level 85 after you did, and with heirlooms, and with guildies helping that person reach level 85 (see where I'm going?).

The important question (at least in my opinion) should be, did you have fun working to get that piece of gear? If that's a yes, it'd expect then that the experience getting there was worth it :-)

I think we should accept that guilds pushing for world firsts will do anything in their hands to get an edge. And it doesn't sound fair to punish the rest of the playerbase, preventing them from improving the gear of their characters, just because some guilds might get and edge on their race to world first.

It's as much of an assumption as it is saying that many hardcore raiders find super difficult bosses compelling. I mean, it's just my way of trying to put into words that there's a segment of players that like the fact that, eventually, that boss they can't even think of killing right now, will be weaker enough to consider attempting it, and perhaps, succeeding at overcoming it.

I'd be crazy to not say that there're many hardcore raiders that find compelling fighting bosses that are absolutely insane for a huge majority of players.This was happening back on the TBC days (I'll use it since it's been mentioned several times as the ideal "moment" of hardcore raiding). At some point through the BT/Hyjal/SWP cycle, in some realms guilds just started canibalizing each other, as the rest of the players just didn't have the gear, or the progression required to join them. Some guilds broke trying to defeat Brutallus, but I've always wondered how many players trying to enter those guilds, were rejected solely on the gear they had, rather than the actual skill they had, just because they were still playing catch-up to the players that had progressed more than them.No, I don't think there's any concern on setting the barrier too low. I mean, anyone can play basketball, yet I know that the only thing in common I have with Michael Jordan when it comes to basketball skills is that he's also a human being.

Gaming has constantly been evolving, and it'll continue to do so for as long as this industry keeps moving. Difficulty is there, but the industry is probably moving away from punishing the players for things that, in the past, were seen as normal. Heck, back in the days even "casual" games (such as Super Mario) were punishing enough that, if you lost all your lifes (basically, the attempts at finishing the game), you had to start from scratch back in World 1-1.The proper equivalent to your comparison would be that, for Jordan's despair, I'd have fun playing with my friends and perhaps even winning local tournaments (thanks to them, not me, certainly). But, anyways, you're comparing the professional aspect of something anyone can do (play basketball) with a videogame. The differences in that regard, are, obviously, too big to even consider it a fair ground.

Anyways, let's leave that example up there, would be a shame if the thread went off-topic now when there're so many interesting posts going around.

Kaivax

Every week this summer, we’re challenging you to get together with a few friends to explore a part of Azeroth that you may not have seen in a while, or perform a feat that you may have never done. We’re calling them World of Warcraft Summer Challenges, and we’re going to be playing along with you as we hunt down rare achievements, get screenshots of amazing bosses, and try to find some rare gear for our transmogrification sets.

In this thread, we're talking about this week's challenge, posting stories about experiences completing it, and linking to screenshots.

Furthermore, if you've thought of something awesome to do while exploring Ulduar (that we didn't include in the blog post), this is the place to say so!

Latin American Editors Wanted

Frost

The Blizzard Web Team comprises artists, writers, and engineers. They help build and maintain the websites that form Blizzard's online presence, such as the website you're on right now. They're driven by a deeply-rooted passion for games and online culture, and if you share this passion, there may be a job for you with our Web Team.

We're hiring two additional editors to help support our growing audience in Latin America. Specifically, we're looking for a native Portuguese speaker and a native Spanish speaker to join our existing Latin American editors*. Your job will be to help us translate and create new website content for players in Latin American countries, including new game guide updates, account management website features, feature previews, and much more.

If you have exceptional language skills in both Portuguese or Spanish and English, a passion for videogames, web publishing experience, a well-developed sense of adventure, and the desire to be part of a creative team in a fast-paced work environment, then we would love to hear from you.

Commentaires

Commentaire de dukenukemi

Protectors of the Endless fight seems boring but the temple looks great!

Commentaire de Interest

on 2012-07-06T14:27:43-05:00

Oh gawd. Dat Elegon fight.

Commentaire de Lolus

on 2012-07-06T18:54:50-05:00

So Algalon 1.5 is researching life in Pandaria?

Commentaire de Interest

on 2012-07-06T19:26:57-05:00

So Algalon 1.5 is researching life in Pandaria?

Sha corruption detected. Reorigination sequence commence.

What? Someone's been to the Halls of Origination?

Crap.

Commentaire de yukonjack

on 2012-07-06T19:37:50-05:00

So Algalon 1.5 is researching life in Pandaria?

Sha corruption detected. Reorigination sequence commence.

What? Someone's been to the Halls of Origination?

Crap.

lol

Commentaire de Interest

on 2012-07-06T21:14:13-05:00

So Algalon 1.5 is researching life in Pandaria?

Sha corruption detected. Reorigination sequence commence.

What? Someone's been to the Halls of Origination?

Crap.

lol

I was kind of expecting some lore person to drop in stating how incorrect my statement is D:.

Commentaire de Michaelgal

on 2012-07-06T22:07:58-05:00

Why are the pics such low resolution? For how epic they look, they should be clearer! :)

Commentaire de Interest

on 2012-07-06T22:10:56-05:00

I think that might just be the game engine limitations o.0

Commentaire de Murlocinataor

on 2012-07-07T00:58:58-05:00

I hope there are more comics like that, that story was pretty cool.

Commentaire de Pektra

on 2012-07-07T06:12:11-05:00

Lmao "Elegon".I see what you did there, Blizz.

Commentaire de RegiRuler

on 2012-07-07T21:12:28-05:00

Note where the biggest/brightest star is on the human celestial model (and on an unrelated note, that it's a human.)

Commentaire de AnrDaemon

on 2012-07-08T06:36:59-05:00

keep in mind that Mists of Pandaria also adds scenarios, pet battles, challenge modes and plenty of daily quests to do at level 90,

Which can be explained as "pointless grind".

Commentaire de AnrDaemon

on 2012-07-08T06:41:44-05:00

Note where the biggest/brightest star is on the human celestial model (and on an unrelated note, that it's a human.)

It's Vrykul... who are human progenitors.

Commentaire de Terrassen

on 2012-07-10T06:22:01-05:00

More worthless replies from Blizzard, denying their failures of the game.

Commentaire de Joejr82

on 2012-07-10T12:56:12-05:00

The Elegon fight sounds like fun but i wonder how they will handle druid shape shift forms if they will also turn into the celestial humans or what.

Commentaire de Interest

on 2012-07-10T14:59:24-05:00

The Elegon fight sounds like fun but i wonder how they will handle druid shape shift forms if they will also turn into the celestial humans or what.

Astral cat!

Commentaire de Arraya

on 2012-07-13T12:10:35-05:00

Well, i don't know if this is Off-Topic or not, but my when i enter my password and e-mail for the MoP beta login screen it sends me to choose a realm ( Normal, RP, PvP, RPPVP ) and it gives me the Development instead of US or those other options and it sends me to and empty realm selection page. Can someone please help me?